Verify that you are using a license that includes the security features.

If you want to try all of the platinum features, you can start a 30-day trial. At the end of the trial period, you can purchase a subscription to keep using the full functionality. For more information, see https://www.elastic.co/subscriptions and License Management.

Configure Transport Layer Security (TLS/SSL) for internode-communication.

This requirement applies to clusters with more than one node and to clusters with a single node that listens on an external interface. Single-node clusters that use a loopback interface do not have this requirement. For more information, see Encrypting Communications.

Set the passwords for all built-in users.

The Elasticsearch security features provide built-in users to help you get up and running. The elasticsearch-setup-passwords command is the simplest method to set the built-in users' passwords for the first time.

For example, you can run the command in an "interactive" mode, which prompts you to enter new passwords for the built-in users:

bin/elasticsearch-setup-passwords interactive

For more information about the command options, see elasticsearch-setup-passwords.

The elasticsearch-setup-passwords command uses a transient bootstrap password that is no longer valid after the command runs successfully. You cannot run the elasticsearch-setup-passwords command a second time. Instead, you can update passwords from the Management > Users UI in Kibana or use the security user API.

Choose which types of realms you want to use to authenticate users.

Set up roles and users to control access to Elasticsearch.

For example, to grant John Doe full access to all indices that match the pattern events* and enable him to create visualizations and dashboards for those indices in Kibana, you could create an events_admin role and assign the role to a new johndoe user.

curl -XPOST -u elastic 'localhost:9200/_security/role/events_admin' -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{
  "indices" : [
    {
      "names" : [ "events*" ],
      "privileges" : [ "all" ]
    },
    {
      "names" : [ ".kibana*" ],
      "privileges" : [ "manage", "read", "index" ]
    }
  ]
}'

curl -XPOST -u elastic 'localhost:9200/_security/user/johndoe' -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{
  "password" : "userpassword",
  "full_name" : "John Doe",
  "email" : "john.doe@anony.mous",
  "roles" : [ "events_admin" ]
}'

Enable auditing to keep track of attempted and successful interactions with your Elasticsearch cluster:

Events are logged to a dedicated <clustername>_audit.json file in ES_HOME/logs, on each cluster node.